


Degrees of Distance

by WakeUpDreaming



Category: Scorpion (TV 2014)
Genre: Communication, F/M, Fluff, Mild Smut, Pizza, Post 2x17, Post Adaptation, showering together, smluff, snuggles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-23
Updated: 2016-02-23
Packaged: 2018-05-22 18:50:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6090664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WakeUpDreaming/pseuds/WakeUpDreaming
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's keeping distance. He thinks. Toby's not exactly sure how to proceed with Happy after the events of Adaptation, but he realizes before long that she's willing to spell it out for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Degrees of Distance

“So,” Toby says, because he’ll keep his distance, he’ll do it, even if he wants to hold her just to prove she’s there every time he closes his eyes, “want to get dinner?”

Happy shrugs, leaning up against the side of the car. She’s still hesitant, keeping distance.

He’ll give her space. He’ll stay a pace away.

God, this is hard.

“I think maybe,” she says slowly, “we should go home.”

He won’t be deflated. He won’t.

She looks at him. “Don’t look so pathetic,” she jokes. “I meant my place.”

“Oh,” he says, sighing. “Right. Thought you were still mad at me.”

She shrugs. “I think a little bit,” she considers. “I mean, a tracking app in my phone? Really?”

He winces. “I know,” he says. “But in Antarctica –”

“You said that already,” Happy interrupts. “I don’t want you to worry about that anymore, because you've already apologized. I’m just going to be mad for a little while. But I’ll get over it.” She shrugs. “Maybe even tonight.”

“I’m doing everything I can not to make a joke,” Toby says.

She sighs. “Go ahead.”

He grins at her. “Maybe you could get over it tonight by getting under me.”

“See, I knew you were going to say that,” Happy says, shaking her head as she opens the car door. “It’s not as funny when I know exactly what you’re going to say.”

Toby lets himself smile. “Only because you know me so well.”

She shoots him a look. “I do,” she says. “And, uh,” she looks away. “And you know me well too. I couldn’t have gotten through that medical,” she winces, “thing without you.” She smiles up at him, leaning against the car door. “Thanks.”

“Any time.” That smile makes him think, hope maybe, that he’s allowed to push limits right now. He takes a hesitant step forward, and Happy replies with a groan.

“Jeez, Doc, take the hint.” She pulls him in and kisses him quickly, firmly, just enough to get his head spinning. “It’s not an extreme,” she says, “think a thermometer. Shoot for 80 degrees. Not 120, not your current brisk 30. 80.”

He smirks at her. “80’s pretty hot.”

“Yeah, well, we’re not at work anymore,” she says with a shrug. “We can turn it up a notch.”

“So, like,” he searches for the right way to run this metaphor, “50 degrees at work?”

“40,” Happy corrects. “You can stand near me, but no touching.”

“But right now?” he asks

“This is 40,” she says, gesturing at the space between them. "This," she pulls him closer, "is around a 70." Toby can hardly breathe. "And this," she kisses him, tongue doing amazing things before she pulls away, "is an 80."

“Got it,” Toby says, and he knows he's looking pretty stupid when he smiles at her. "As long as we can up it to 120 when I'm in bed with you, I'm liking this."

“I’m going to very quickly regret this metaphor,” Happy sighs, kissing him lightly. “See you at my apartment?”

“Yeah,” he replies, “yeah, see you soon.”

He gets so distracted on the way by how he’s going to handle this that he misses the exit, has to turn around, and gets stuck in twenty minutes extra of traffic.

He pulls into the driveway of the apartment complex and parks. It’s dark already – enough that he has to use his cell phone to walk up the path, and he rings Happy’s door.

“Hello?” she says, like she wasn’t expecting anyone.

“Hey, Hap, it’s me,” he says. “Sorry –”

“God, finally,” she interrupts, sounding exasperated. “Thought you died. Come in.”

He walks up, and feels nervous, for some reason. None of what’s about to happen is a first. They’ve slept together, woken up together, made breakfast in their underwear, binge watched the entire first season of How to Get Away with Murder last weekend.

But right now something feels new, and strange, and weirdly exciting.

She opens the door before he has a chance to knock.

“Hi,” she says, and, god, that smile knocks him on the floor.

“Hi,” he says.

“Door’s open,” she says. She’s about to start laughing at him. “You can, I don’t know, walk in.”

He steps in, and feels butterflies in his stomach, weird jitters he can’t control. So he drops his bag on the floor and turns to her, ready to say something, but instead she dives toward him, catching his face in her hands and kissing him so hard it’s like a battle.

“Hello,” he says, breathless, a few seconds later when her enthusiasm loses to the power of gravity. “What was that?”

She steadies herself with a breath. “I said I liked you earlier,” she tells him. “And I know – I know you’re way beyond that. I know.” She pauses, looking like she’s searching for the words. “But I don’t want you to think that I won’t.”

“Won’t what?” Toby asks. He’s lost at this point. Kissing Happy always makes his head dizzy, but this is a new kind of unexpected.

She takes a deep breath. “You love me,” she says, “you have for years. I get that.” She looks at him. “And I don’t want you to think I’m never going to,” she stumbles over her words, “get there. With you. For you.” She drops her head in her hands. “God, why do I suck at this?”

“Hey,” he says, and she falls into his arms, resting her head on his chest, “you don’t suck at this.”

“Well, I’m up against Mr. I’m Proud of You, so I’ve got a lot to compete with,” she grumbles.

He kisses the top of her head again, because he can, because she’s in his arms and he’s in her apartment. “Well, I’m a man of words,” he considers, “and you’re a woman of actions. You don’t have to tell me anything you’re not ready to say.”

She pulls back just far enough to look at him. “That’s what I’m talking about,” she says. “You talk like you’re reading from a book. How?”

He shrugs. “You engineer like you designed and built every machine ever invented. It’s just what we’re good at.”

She stares at him. “You need to stop talking.”

“Okay.”

“That’s not stopping,” Happy says, putting a hand flat on his chest and pushing him backwards. “You’re still talking.”

He’s not sure what’s going on, but he kind of likes it, so he lets her guide him to her bed, and she pushes him down.

“You know,” she says, straddling his lap, “a very thoughtful man once told me that the body is like a machine,” she leans close, “and I’m very good with machines.”

Toby lets his hands wander across her body. “You should, uh,” he swallows, “you should put your theory to the test.”

She looks proud of herself, almost smug, as she leans in and kisses him, and she’s not wrong. She’s good with her hands and even better with her mouth, something about the way she kisses blowing his mind every time, and he just wants more of her every time they start.

She pulls off his hat and throws it across the room, and from there, all other clothing follows. She touches like she’s trying to prove something, like every time she presses her fingertips into his shoulders or every time she scratches her nails across his back is a way to communicate. Whatever she’s saying, he’s all ears.

It’s not long before she’s pulled him on top of her, before he’s moving inside her, before she’s gasping his name in a way that’s saying more than any other word could.

He lets her say it, loves to hear it, holds back the impulse to kiss her when his name falls from her lips, because her name is tumbling from his and they sound so good as they float together in the air.

He finally kisses her when they’re spent and satisfied, when the smile on her lips is contagious and all he wants is to taste it.

“I’d make a machine pun,” Toby says, collapsing to the side of the bed and trying not to be too elated when Happy cuddles into his side, “but I’m a little brain dead right now.”

Happy laughs. “How about,” she thinks, “I know how to work you like a machine.”

He laughs, kissing her temple. “Well done. You can be in charge of post-sex puns.”

She cuddles against him, a tangle of limbs and unspoken words, and he tries to think of a way this would be better, how he could be happier.

He’s got nothing.

“You’re amazing, you know that?” he murmurs.

“You can say that whenever you want,” Happy replies, and he can hear her smile, “because it’s true, and everybody already knows it.”

“If they already know, then why do I have to say it?”

She looks up at him. “You idiots can use a reminder every once in a while.” She kisses his shoulder. "For the record," she adds, "that was well over 120 degrees."

"It was?" Toby asks.

Happy laughs. "Oh yeah."

"And that's okay."

She looks at him. "You keep that up, and we're in this for the long haul."

Happy looks a bit startled at her own words, but exhaustion takes over before she can react to them. "Don't think too much about that," she mumbles.

"Duly noted," Toby says, and he can barely contain his glee.

Happy falls asleep before Toby does, as always, and he takes the time to memorize the way her hair fans out against her pillows, the way her shampoo smells, the way her hand curls against the skin of his ribs.

_I like you. A lot. You’re not gonna lose me – figuratively or literally._

It echoes in his mind as if etched there by Happy’s capable hands, and he trails his fingertips along her shoulder as he lets the words sink in.

Toby feels like a teenager, telling himself, “She likes me,” quietly with a stupid grin on his face. “A lot.”

Even so, there’s a pervasive worry that, someday, he will lose her again. They’ve fought hard enough to get here that he’s not sure they’ll be the ones to do it.

But there’s nothing more agonizing than the knowledge that it could have easily been Happy bleeding out in that shack, and he’s not confident that Sylvester would have been able to save her on his own.

And he wasn’t there to take care of them. But Happy was.

“I’m so damn proud of you,” he says again, because he’s sure she hasn’t heard it enough, because she wants his words to echo in her dreams like hers echo in his. “Happy Quinn, there’s nothing you can’t do. You’re a superhero.”

“Thanks,” she says, and Toby starts, unaware she’d been woken up, “but I’m trying to sleep.”

Toby winces. “Sorry, Hap.”

“No,” she replies. “It’s okay. You can keep talking about how awesome I am.”

“I’m always talking about how awesome you are,” he replies.

She shifts so she’s looking at Toby. “See, you can't say things like that, because I start to listen, and now I’m awake.”

“Sorry,” he says again.

“Stop apologizing,” she says. She sits up. “I’m hungry.”

“You’re hungry?”

She turns to him. “I performed surgery in a dirty shack today,” she says. “I also verbally threw down with our boss. You think there was any time to eat in there?”

“You’ve got a point.”

Twenty minutes later, Happy’s wearing Toby’s shirt and a pair of unexpectedly sexy underwear, and he’s in boxers while they eat Domino’s pizza on Happy’s couch. He’s surprised when she throws her legs over his lap as they eat, constantly touching.

“Hey, can I ask you something weird?” he risks.

She looks at him, halfway through a mouthful of meat lover’s pizza. “Yeah. Shoot.”

“This,” he gestures to the way her bare legs are resting on his, “this is okay as long as we’re not at work.”

She shrugs. “Yeah.”

“And can I call you nicknames?” he asks. “When we’re not at work?”

“I suppose.”

“But not Bunny,” he clarifies.

She bites her lip. “I mean,” she says, tiny grin on her lips, “if you want to.”

He laughs. “Duly noted," he says, "bunny."

She sets the pizza down in the box, a tiny smile on her lips. “Look, in public, at work, just assume that a general bubble should be kept.”

“To be clear,” he says, “no kisses, cuddling, anything at work? Hand holding?”

“Fast kisses, cheek kisses, are okay if nobody’s looking,” Happy decides. “Hand holding only if strictly necessary.”

“Is wanting to hold your hand strictly necessary?” he asks, grinning.

“No,” Happy says firmly, but she’s grinning too. “But, like. If you’re freaking out, I’ll grab your hand to get you to chill. Deal?”

He nods. “And at home?”

She thinks about it. “As long as you never try to put a tracking device on my phone again, and you keep the extreme confessions of love and texts to a minimum,” she leans close to him, “I’m open.”

“Okay, now you’re just making it too easy to make jokes,” Toby says, rolling his eyes.

Happy shrugs. “Got to make something easy for you.”

She’s yawning after her second slice, so they put the rest away and collapse back into bed, Happy falling asleep directly on top of him and Toby following not long after.

They’re woken up by a phone call from Walter at seven in the morning, and Toby isn’t quite awake before Happy’s grabbed whatever was ringing and says, “Yeah?”

“Happy?” Walter says, sounding confused. “This is Toby’s phone.”

“Get over it, Walt, we’ve done the freak out already,” she grumbles. “What’s the problem?”

“Case,” he replies, and even away from the phone Toby can hear his discomfort. “Um. If you could both make your way to the garage within the hour, I would appreciate it.”

“On it,” Happy says, interrupting herself with a yawn. “See you soon.”

She hangs up the phone and collapses, face down, on Toby’s chest.

“That hurt more than it should have,” Toby says, wincing.

Happy sits up, touching her nose gingerly. “No kidding." She shakes her head. "Also, we’ve got a case.”

“I’ve heard.”

“I’m going to take a shower,” she says, kissing him gently. He thinks that might be his favorite kind of kiss from her – the ones where it feels like a habit.

“Okay.”

“Are you coming?” she asks, standing in the doorway, and, hell, he can’t decide what part of her looks best. His shirt hangs off her shoulders and down her body like a drape, and it hits just high enough along her legs that he can see the tiniest hint of her ass. He swallows.

“In a manner of speaking.”

She whips off the shirt and throws it at him. “You won’t be if you keep that up.”

"You're shirtless," he says, because she's beautiful and he can't keep his eyes off of her, “I can keep a lot of things up.”

She groans and laughs at the same time. “Why am I your girlfriend again?”

“Because I’m charming and good with my words,” he replies, walking over to her. She leans against the door frame and pull him so he’s in the v of her legs, nearly pressed up against her.

“Good with your mouth, you mean,” she says, eyes flickering down to his lips.

“Your words,” he says, “not mine.”

She pulls him in, kissing him so slowly and deeply that he forgets his own name, until she steps away and into her shower.

It’s another twenty minutes before they’re done with that, hands roaming all of the place, and he can’t get over the way he can get her to lose her mind only using his fingers and a kiss to her neck.

“Not fair,” she says, legs unsteady as she catches her breath, “we don’t time for you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, kissing her as they rinse the soap from their skin, “we’ve got plenty of time when we get back.”

They get to the garage, somehow, with Happy’s crazy driving, at 7:45, hair still damp and Happy in the driver’s seat of Toby’s car, because, “I’m low on gas.”

“You guys are early,” Paige says, staring at them skeptically. “For the first time ever.”

Happy shrugs. “Had a good start to the day,” she says, and Toby doesn’t miss the way she looks at him. It's tiny and subtle, but he realize it's her form of intimacy. A way to tell him she's thinking of him when they can't be close. It's how they can hit 40 degrees at work without anyone else knowing. 

“Yeah,” he adds. “I’m ready to work. What’s the case?”

“What’s the case?” Ralph asks. “How about what’s with you two getting here at the same time?”

Toby looks at Paige. “You’re making us tell him?”

“There wasn’t time!” she exclaims. “You two got here thirty seconds after we did.”

Happy nods at Toby. “We’re dating. He’s my boyfriend. It doesn’t change much.”

Ralph nods. “About time,” he muses. “Now instead of whining to us about being in love with you, he’ll just tell you.”

Paige and Happy laugh so hard they have to lean on their desks, and Toby just feels himself go bright red.

“You’re a menace, kid,” he says, ruffling Ralph’s hair.

“I know,” he replies, grinning up at Toby. “It’s part of my charm.”


End file.
